It has been found with conventional magnetic transducer designs that satisfactory tape to head contact cannot be maintained when reduced contact pressures are used. This problem is particularly acute in high speed tape transport systems where the contact pressure between the tape and head must be minimized in order to reduce friction to an acceptable level thereby limiting wear and eliminating any scrape flutter caused by the vibrations created in the tape as it passes over the head.
More particularly, it has been found in high speed applications that any rounding of the leading edge of the tranducer head surface resulting from wear will cause the tape to lift or fly off of the head surface due to the lifting pressure caused by the boundary layer of air carried along the surface of the tape. Such tape fly necessarily causes undesirable high frequency signal attenuation. Furthermore, due to the inherent upward flex or curl curvature created along the edges of the recording tape as it is tensioned, it has been found with conventional head designs that it is not possible to record narrow signal tracks adjacent to the edges of the tape without similiar unsatisfactory high frequency signal attenuation.